A question ?Suppose i have apps like wine , callibre and some other games on my LINUX MINT16 XFCE installation.Now , for some reason i want to reinstall mint ."is there any way that i can protect all these program wine , callibre,cinnamonDE etc. so i do not need to REINSTALLEVERYTHING BACK "please explain in detail and simply

Mint has got a tool MintBackup.It can backup and restore your personal data, but it can also backup a list of apps you installed from the repositories.That list can then be used as input for "restore", where the restore is really just reinstalling everything you had at the time of backup without you having to select everything again.

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You can take it one step further. Before you re-install with the Mint Backup or Synaptic script, you can copy all of the .deb files from your old Mint to your new Mint. Copy all of the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives/ to the new /var/cache/apt/archives/ folder.That way the programs are already downloaded, saving you time and bandwidth - unless there is a newer version, in which case, the newer version will be downloaded and installed.

You can copy the hidden files and folders related to the programs you want, also.

austin.texas wrote:You can take it one step further. Before you re-install with the Mint Backup or Synaptic script, you can copy all of the .deb files from your old Mint to your new Mint. Copy all of the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives/ to the new /var/cache/apt/archives/ folder.That way the programs are already downloaded, saving you time and bandwidth - unless there is a newer version, in which case, the newer version will be downloaded and installed.

You can copy the hidden files and folders related to the programs you want, also.

Not always true - if you use bleachbit or use apt-get clean all your deb files will be removed